Waegwan's Facelift

There are some grey cement walls around Waegwan getting a lovely facelift by Korean artists. They still had the awning up when I was taking the pictures, so I had to take them from the side. I also caught most of them on their lunch break!

Farewell to Arms

For more background, please refer to my prior post Nakdong Reenactment.

A sad event has occurred in Waegwan: the bridge has fallen. This is no ordinary bridge. This is

the bridge that lives in history as a horrible symbol of what can happen in a horrific war. This is the bridge that was blown while still loaded with refugees (and North Korean soldiers) in order to win a strategic battle. There is an indefinable emotional attachment to this bridge, and I'm sure if I can feel this as a foreigner it must be stronger to the Koreans. The original pillars remained and

there was a pedestrian bridge built. It was in regular use, until now. They have been doing a great deal of dredging in the river the past several months, and according to a Korean lady who can understand the broadcast news, this caused the soil around the supports to shift, which then caused the collapse.

We had a small typhoon recently so the debris accumulated rather quickly.

A view down the bridge.

Across the street is a tunnel that goes under the infamous Hill 303. I've never been in this tunnel and as far as I know there is nothing in there. I can't find out anything about it other than that is said to be over 100 years old.

Around the corner from the tunnel are some stairs that go up (and up!) the side of Hill 303 (it's a really long hill, with quite a ridge line to follow) to some Korean War memorials, and one specifically for UN soldiers. Of course they are all in Korean so I don't know what they say.

Pohang Lighthouse Museum & Camping

For Father's Day my husband wanted to go camping. The for real camping in a tent and building a fire to cook and all that. I reluctantly agreed and our chosen destination was a beach in Pohang. We didn't plan for exactly which beach, we just drove till we found a quiet, clean beach. The drive was interesting in itself, on a narrow curvy road following the coast of a small peninsula. We discovered Guryeongpo, a small but almost deserted beach about 12 miles or so out of Pohang. The water was really cold, almost too cold even to walk in, so there was no water play. The girls had fun finding seashells and digging in the sand while the hubs set up the tent and did all the prep for a fire. We had brought some fish Matt had caught to cook, but didn't use all of it, so we gave it to two Korean men sitting in front of the minbak nearby. They reciprocated by bringing us some hot coffee and we all shared a few moments of smiles and mostly silent camaraderie. It was fun spending the day at the beach, but the night got cold, and brought some rather loud visitors to the beach, so we ended up leaving around midnight. This turned out to be a good decision, because it started raining as we were packing up and rained on us the entire drive home.

Can you believe I didn't take a picture of the tent after it was set-up?

Before settling at the beach, we made a tourist stop at the Lighthouse Museum, adjacent to the popular Homigot Sunrise Square. Somehow we missed the actual square, and I wasn't able to see the Hand of Harmony sticking up out of the water. (Disclaimer: borrowed picture!)

The museum was mildly interesting. It contained displays of lighthouse lighting equipment throughout history, lots of pictures, models of famous lighthouses around the world, and a few other things. There was also a small separate building of fishery science and another building with a small special display of ceramic lighthouses. The lovely park grounds outside the museum had some statues and miniatures of several lighthouses.

the fisheries science building

various lighting mechanisms for lighthouse

Haeundae Beach Sand Festival

Haeundae Beach, the uber-popular place during the summer time so I was pleasantly surprised to find the sand festival not as 'sardinish' as I expected. The weather was perfect and we all had a fabulous time. The theme was fairy tales as you will be able to see from the pictures. There was a two-part castle/fortress at the entrance around the guy with the sword, but I couldn't get a picture of it - too big! Here's a partial:

There were plenty more!

Since we are still waiting to move any day now I couldn't make plans to go till the last minute and was unable to book a hotel room; everyone was sold out! We were only able to stay for several hours during the day, thereby missing most of the entertainment venues since they mainly had that at night. We did get to see an airshow by the Black Eagles, Korean fancy fighter pilots, that was pretty awesome.

I don't know if you can see it well in the posted photo, but they made a taeguk in the sky.

We also took some time to play in the water, but it was really cold, too cold to do anything other than get your feet wet.

There was sledding and sand boarding that were really fun as well!